Why a Coffee Farmer Started Making Flavors
Coffee is a flavor. So is vanilla, caramel, and cinnamon. On a finca where flavor is the business, the leap was shorter than it looks.
A farmer already knows how much a cup depends on what happens before it. Flavor is just the next question.
Summary
- Our businesses in food production and flavor grew out of an interest in what makes a cup taste the way it does.
- Velsura and its Cremoras line work in creamers and flavored products.
- The goal is to connect the farm, the roast, and the flavor in one chain.
Key takeaways
- Flavor is a natural extension of coffee farming, not a departure.
- Origin and flavor can work together instead of competing.
- We are building toward flavored coffee that respects its source.
If you spend years looking at coffee closely, you start to see it as a flavor problem. How does a cherry become a cup? What determines the sweetness, the acidity, the body? Why does one lot taste of orange and another of chocolate?
Once you start asking those questions, it is not a big step to asking another: what happens when you add something on purpose?
From farm to flavor
Our family of businesses has grown outward from the finca. Velsura, our food production company in Guatemala City, makes products in the world of creamers and flavors, including the Cremoras line. Another of our brands, Sabores Origen, works with flavored creamers, syrups, and slush products. These companies already know how to build flavor into a product at scale.
Putting that knowledge together with a coffee farm is the logical next step. We know where the coffee comes from. We roast most of it ourselves. We have the experience to work on flavor. What we are building now is the bridge.
The challenge
The danger in flavored coffee is that flavor can cover the coffee. A cheap flavoring over a poor bean produces something that tastes like chemicals. Customers may like it at first, but they quickly tire of it.
We want to do the opposite. Our aim is to start with a clean, well-roasted bean and add flavor in a way that makes the coffee taste more like itself. That requires skill, patience, and a lot of tasting. We describe the thinking in Flavored Coffee Without the Artificial Aftertaste.
A laboratory in progress
To do this properly, we are building our own laboratory. It is a work in progress, and we will share more as it develops, starting with The Laboratory We Are Building on the Finca.
The larger ambition
We also want to take this beyond Guatemala. Flavored coffee from a real origin, made by people who know the farm, has a story that most mass-market products lack. We think there is room for that on shelves around the world, and we are preparing for it.
Why the roots belong in the same story
You might wonder how a candleholder fits with coffee flavoring. To us, it is the same impulse: take what the finca produces, look at it more closely than anyone has, and find out what else it can be. The roots, the cherry, the roast, and the flavor are all answers to the same question.
Common questions
What is Cremoras?
Cremoras is a creamer brand made by Velsura, our food production company in Guatemala.
Are you selling flavored coffee now?
We are building toward it. Our laboratory and flavor work are in development, and we will share updates here.
Keep reading
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